Rain followed Formula One from the British Grand Prix to the German weekend. Mercedes AMG GP has had an up and down weekend so far. Roberg was one of the quick drivers on Friday Practice, while Schumacher placed his car into the barrier at the end of the second practice session. On Saturday, the drivers used all the tires, dry, inter, wet to try and claim pole position for the race tomorrow. Qualifying started in the dry will all the driver taking to the track to beat the forcasted rain. Rosberg finished the session in 7th place and Schumacher barely managed to escape elimination at the close of the session.

Right at the start of the second qualifying session, the rain started to fall, all the teams quickly slapped on the intermediate tires and headed out to put in their fastest times before the track became too wet. Even though Schumacher came out last, he still claimed 2nd place, but this time it was Nico Rosberg who struggled and couldn't beat elimination and finished the session 17th. He will drop 5 spots due to a gearbox change penalty meaning he will start in 22nd place.

When the third Qualifying, the rain started to let up, but the track was completely wet and the teams had to change to the full wet tires. All the driver headed out to clear the track of the standing water and start putting times in. Both Fernando Alonso and Schumacher protest that the track is too wet, trying to stop the session. Mclaren's Jensen Button sets the first time, but it's RBR's Vettel who starts lighting up the timesheets. Michael Schumacher sets the fastest time as the track starts to dry out, but is soon beat out by Vettel and Webber. In the end it is Fernando Alonso who beats Vettel's time to lay claim to pole position. Because Mark Webber also had to change his gearbox, he drops 5 spots, which means Schumacher will start 3rd on the grid for tomorrow's race.

“That's certainly a nice way to start the German Grand Prix - we had been expecting a position between fifth and seventh on the grid, so fourth in qualifying, which will become third place on the grid, is even better. Naturally I'm particularly happy for all the Mercedes colleagues in the grandstands: they support us throughout the year and we wanted to give something back to them. In any case, we can be satisfied with this result. Perhaps it would have been even better to change to a new set of tyres right at the end, but I don't think we could have done much more today. Now we have to focus completely on tomorrow's race. We know that it should be dry tomorrow and we should be more competitive here than we were in Silverstone.”

Nico Rosberg (17th, Q2 - 1m 41.551s)

“It's a bit surprising to finish so far down in qualifying today, but unfortunately I couldn't get the right temperatures in my first set of intermediate tyres in Q2 so I was a few seconds off the pace. Yesterday I was quite confident in the wet and in the dry so it is frustrating, especially on top of the gearbox penalty. But I will still hope to score some points tomorrow because a lot is possible in the races this year. I will definitely push a lot in front of all our fans here.”

Ross Brawn, Mercedes team principal

“It was a very eventful qualifying today but the positive thing was that our car was fundamentally fast in both the dry, intermediate and wet parts of the session. Nico was the second fastest prime tyre runner in Q1, but when the rain came, he struggled to generate temperature in his intermediate tyres. In those conditions, once you lose tyre temperature you never get it back, so we certainly missed the window with him. Michael did an excellent job in Q2 and Q3; he was fourth fastest, will start P3, and could potentially have been even further up. But we can be satisfied with a second row start in such tricky conditions.”

Norbert Haug, vice-president, Mercedes-Benz Motorsport

“The conditions were extremely difficult during the qualifying session today, probably the most challenging of this season so far. Michael coped well and posted a top four qualifying result for the sixth time in ten races. Nico suffered from a lack of grip owing to less-than-ideal tyre temperatures and has to start from a long way back. After the wet qualifying, the weather forecast predicts a dry race tomorrow.”

There you go.
Note that Vettel finished 2dn , but only by overtaking Button in the 66th lap while driving outside the circuit.
For that he received a 20 second penalty which got him 5th place.
But on the podium ceremony he still stood on the 2nd place.
Everybody there then already knew he was going to give it up.
Niki Lauda, who did the short press conference on the podium even asked specifically about it

The race itself was for Hockenheim fairly exiting.
Lots of overtaking, inside and outside of the DRS zone.
Good racing.
Only 1 retirement, and that was probably because Lewis did not want to finish 16th.
He overtook Vettel, who was running 2nd at the time, but could not manage to unlap himself from Alomnso, and drove into the pits after a pitstop that dropped him 1 lap down and behind Button.
He yelled "that's it guys, we must retire now" right when he got his puncture in the 4th lap or so, but Mc Laren send him out anyway.

Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso drove an absolutely faultless race in Germany on Sunday afternoon to become the first three-time winner of 2012. Alonso was under consistent pressure, first from Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel and later from McLaren’s Jenson Button, both of whom got within less than a second of the Ferrari at times. But the Spaniard never put a wheel wrong nor lost his nerve and pulled away in the closing stages as Button faded and was repassed by Vettel.

It looked for a long while like a race McLaren could - should - have won, but Button never managed to get close enough to use DRS to find his way by going into the hairpin and as his tyres eventually went off he had to give best to Vettel.

However, the manner in which the world champion passed him going into the hairpin on the 66th lap was subsequently investigated by the race stewards as he went outside the track limits. Vettel argued that he was just giving Button room and that he couldn’t be sure where he was. Button disagreed.

The stewards eventually decided in the Briton’s favour and handed Vettel a 20-second time penalty, which moved the German down into fifth in the race results and promoted Button into second, Lotus’s Kimi Raikkonen into third and Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi into fourth.

All of the leaders made two pit stops, including Raikkonen who didn’t make a late charge this time but enjoyed a strong race, and the duelling Saubers of Kobayashi and Sergio Perez. They started on different tyre strategies, however, with the Japanese driver holding his position as the Mexican came under pressure from three-stopping Michael Schumacher who finished just a second behind for Mercedes.

Red Bull’s Mark Webber was an unusually subdued eighth, with the three-stopping Force India of Nico Hulkenberg salvaging only ninth after a mighty fight with the Saubers early on. Paul di Resta in the other Force India was again on a different strategy, and by the end his tyres were too worn after only two stops to fend off Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg who climbed from 21st on the grid to take the final point from the Scot.

Ferrari’s Felipe Massa collided with Daniel Ricciardo at the start and thus compromised his race and had to fight back to 12th place, fittingly passing the Toro Rosso of Ricciardo right at the end. Behind the Australian, team mate Jean-Eric Vergne was 14th ahead of Pastor Maldonado, who looked a threat for Williams early on before dropping back.

Vitaly Petrov drove a feisty race for Caterham to beat team mate Heikki Kovalainen quite comfortably. The latter finished 19th as Williams’ Bruno Senna and Lotus’s Romain Grosjean, both delayed by first lap incidents, took 17th and 18th. Charles Pic was never challenged by Marussia team mate Timo Glock, and they were separated by the feisty Pedro de la Rosa in his HRT, with Narain Karthikeyan bringing up the rear in the second Spanish car.

And Lewis Hamilton? His 100th race was a disaster as he cut his left-rear tyre on some of the Massa/Ricciardo debris on the third lap and dropped to the back of the field. A very long - 28-lap - stint on medium Pirellis helped him to climb back and later he played a key role in Button’s race as he caught and passed his team mate and Vettel to unlap himself and was chasing Alonso when the latter stopped for the last time. Vettel was not amused and spoke with harsh criticism afterwards. Hamilton’s pace was to no avail as he eventually became the only retirement with mechanical problems after a dismal day.

The result puts Alonso even further ahead in the title chase with 154 points to Webber’s 120 and Vettel's 110. Raikkonen takes fourth from Hamilton, 98 to 92, with Rosberg sixth on 76 and Button seventh on 68. In the constructors’ stakes, Red Bull have 230 points to Ferrari’s 177, McLaren’s 160 and Lotus’s 159.

The German Grand Prix did not go as planned for Mercedes-Petronas. Schumacher qualified well in 3rd place putting himself in position to do well. Unfortunately, he would ultimately finish in 7th place picking up just 6 points. Rosberg did not fare better finishing the race in 10th place picking up just a single point. These results simply will not due and do not help the Mercedes team much if they want to move out of their 5th place position.

Fernando Alonso won the race making for this third victory of the year. Vettel finished in second but was moved to 5th after receiving a 20 second penalty for driving outside the boundary. Red Bull remains in first with Ferrari in second. 9 races remain in the season.

Well in all fairness Rosberg started from a 22nd position and managed to finish 10th. That was not too bad.
Ok, the team sent him out too late in qualifying Q2 so he was forced to set a time on full wets, where most others had already set a time on Intermediates. So he was 17th on the grid and with a 5 place penalty for changing the gearbox on friday that gave him a 22th starting place on the grid.

Quotes from Mercedes:

Michael Schumacher (7th) "There are nicer ways to finish a home race than falling back from third to seventh place. I squeezed everything I could out of the car but, unfortunately, that's everything we could manage today. It's a pity because I would have loved to have given something more to all our Mercedes-Benz colleagues who were supporting us today. Before this weekend, we expected to be racing between P5 and P7, and of course fifth place would have been the better option, but seventh was our maximum in these circumstances. I got a decent start and the short battle with Sebastian was fun. After that, unfortunately, there weren't too many highlights, apart from setting the fastest lap, perhaps. However, we couldn't maintain that pace for very long. Now we have to look forwards and do our maximum at the next race.”

Nico Rosberg (10th)
“It feels okay to have scored one point today after such a bad qualifying yesterday and starting right at the back. We had a good strategy and I had great fun out there at times overtaking so many people to move from 21st to 10th place. Some of the guys I had to overtake a couple of times and there were some nice manoeuvres. Thanks to our fans here in Hockenheim for their fantastic support, even though the weekend didn't really run to plan. Now I look forward to Budapest in just seven days and hope for a better weekend, and we will keep working very hard towards this.”

Ross Brawn, Mercedes team principal
“We ran the race as well as we could today, in the knowledge that we would have to make three pit stops. Some of our rivals on two-stop strategies faded towards the end but the drop-off was not sufficient for our drivers to be able to take advantage on fresher tyres. Michael and Nico put in consistent performances, pulled off good overtaking moves and we delivered six clean pit stops. Our strategy enabled Nico to climb eleven positions from his starting place, while Michael finished in seventh place for the second time in two weeks. We made the right decisions this afternoon but, after 67 laps, Michael found himself 29 seconds behind the winner. That shows we need to find more pace from the car.”

Norbert Haug, vice-president, Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
“Of course it is not pleasant starting third and coming home seventh. We were convinced that a three-stop strategy would be the fastest race for us, and we will evaluate whether a two-stop strategy could have brought us more. In any case, a podium was out of reach for us today and we certainly need further improvements. Nico put in a great drive, gaining 11 places from 21st to 10th. Like in Silverstone, our best-placed car came home roughly 30 seconds behind the winner, so we are missing about half a second per lap. We are now looking forward to doing a better job next weekend at the Hungarian Grand Prix.”

Sorry Sticky didn't get the race report, my modem fried after a storm and the whole Germanboost sites are blocked at work now.

Qualifying 2, Michael was the last driver to come out, he was behind Nico, both were on inters. He just wasn't able to get a good clean lap in despite MS setting fastest sectors. The Merc team said something disturbing after that race, saying their lack of pace wasn't from tires like usual, but from fuel saving. The car was just using up to much fuel and had to dial the pace down. Merc was having a hard enough time playing catchup to Mclaren, Ferrari, and RBR, but now Lotus is beating them and Sauber isn't that far behind.

Hopefully Merc can score some big points from the Hungary race this weekend before the summer break and get some big upgrade packages for the start of the second half of the season. Both Nico and MS deserve a better car than this Merc needs to get their act together or they'll turn into the next Toyota team.